One of the main talking points of Democratic governor nominee Amy Acton’s campaign is rather than being a partisan politician, she is a unifying force who will work with Republicans to move Ohio forward.

Republicans see Acton quite differently.

During a Wednesday campaign stop in Boardman, Acton said: “Above all, a governor is a convener and a catalyzer and a problem solver. I actually trained for this work I do. You saw me do it in COVID, running all of government and all of society in some ways during our crisis. But I did a residency in preventative medicine in public health when Bob Taft was governor so I actually learned how to run all of government.”

Acton said that “95% of what I’m hearing from people, no one would disagree on. It isn’t partisan, and none of those 95% of things that affect our everyday lives are what this Statehouse is working on, this corrupt and backwards Statehouse.”

As for state government, which has been overwhelmingly controlled by Republicans for the past 16 years, Acton said: “I am simply prioritizing the things that Ohioans — everyday Ohioans — are asking for over let’s just say the priorities of the special interests. What is happening in the Statehouse is it’s no longer about Republicans or Democrats. It’s about extreme wealth, ideology and special interests being packaged as playbooks shoved through statehouses where most people don’t even know who works there.”

With Republicans in control, the logical conclusion is Acton believes they have permitted special interests to control them to the detriment of everyday Ohioans and brought about massive corruption.

Acton said: “I’ve worked in the Statehouse through five governors and you can argue about things and you might have differences in how we might do policy. But at the end of the day, we always made policies that got implemented to make Ohioans’ lives better. That is not what is happening in the Statehouse now.”

Acton’s top priority as governor is to obtain tax cuts for working families, specifically a refundable earned income tax credit and a child tax credit of between $500 and $1,000 per child for families making up to $85,000 in annual income.

Democrats in the state Legislature have introduced bills for both proposals, which haven’t gone anywhere — and won’t — under the Republican majority.

Acton acknowledged that Republicans will maintain a majority in the House and Senate after this election, but she said Democrats “have a great chance of breaking the supermajority” the GOP currently enjoys.

If that is to happen, Acton said she would be able to veto bills — presumably the most extreme ones passed by Republicans.

But that does nothing to move Acton’s priorities forward in the state Legislature as Republicans will continue to ignore and block them, never giving her an opportunity to sign them into law.

One way to add more Democratic seats in the General Assembly is redistricting state legislative lines.

Ohioans overwhelmingly approved reforms in 2015 that were supposed to stop gerrymandering and create competitive districts.

It hasn’t worked that way with Republicans, who control five of the seven seats on the Ohio Redistricting Commission, drawing legislative districts to favor candidates from their political party. It’s important to note that Ohio is a Republican state. Republicans have won every executive branch race since 2010 — and won nearly all of them for several years prior to the 2006 and 2008 elections.

An effort in 2024 to take redistricting out of the hands of politicians was rejected by voters though Republicans wrote the ballot language that those who collected hundreds of thousands of signatures for the constitutional amendment vehemently opposed.

Acton said she believes next year “the state will, in a bipartisan way, end gerrymandering. What that will allow us to do, finally, is incentivize good public servants on both sides of the aisle to serve again the way we always have and have the good fight that we should have on the nuances of policy.”

Acton didn’t get into the details of what that would look like. But if Acton is elected governor and Democrat Allison Russo wins the secretary of state’s race, that will make it considerably easier to get accomplished.

David Skolnick covers local, state and national politics for the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator.